Opaque policies, fixation with KPIs, rankings: Why arts and humanities academics quit NUS, NTU
Note: I am not the author of this story. It was published by Today Online but taken down by them due to legal action from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Academics quoted stand by their comments. I decided to republish this as I abhor censorship. The original article is by TODAY, an online media publication based in Singapore. Medicaorp, its parent company, is Singapore’s largest media broadcaster and provider in Singapore and the only terrestrial television broadcaster in the city-state. It holds a 60% stake, with Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) owning the remaining 40%. Both are state-linked media companies. This post is republished with respect to TODAY’s copyright of the original article.
Opaque tenure and promotion policies, resistance to innovation and a “warped” notion of institutional excellence have surfaced as reasons some academics in the arts and humanities fields threw in the towel at Singapore’s two biggest universities in the last couple of years.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) do well in attracting talented faculty members in the short term but fail to retain them — no thanks to their incessant pursuit of rankings and the relative lack of academic freedom when it comes to certain projects or research initiatives, about 10 academics — who have either recently left or are leaving the two universities — told TODAY.
Such turnover of staff, some of whom had wanted more teaching opportunities but were under pressure for research output, will ultimately have a negative impact on students, said the academics, who have moved on to universities overseas.
TODAY recently reported that eight lecturers quit in as many months at NUS’ communications and new media department, resulting in some modules being discontinued and anxiety among some students.
Academics who left NUS and NTU — which cater to the bulk of undergraduates studying arts, social sciences and communications in Singapore — said there were deeper and pervasive issues affecting the faculty members in these fields particularly. However, in response to TODAY’s queries, the two universities said the turnover rates at these faculties were not high but they did not disclose any numbers.
NUS said the total number of academic staff at its science faculty and arts and social sciences faculty has been “stable” over the last three years. The turnover rate for academic staff at these two schools has also declined over the same period, said an NUS spokesperson. NTU said the turnover at its College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences is comparable to other faculties.
Decrying the leadership’s fixation with key performance indicators (KPIs), philosophy professor Axel Gelfert, who left NUS in November 2017, said: “There is an eagerness on the part of some middling university managers to second-guess which policies the Education Ministry (MOE) might come up with next, and try to meet those KPIs before they even emerge. This means an ever-shifting maze of policies and guidelines which can literally change overnight.”
Prof Gelfert joined the Technical University of Berlin as a full professor at the end of 2017 after spending a decade at NUS, most recently as an associate professor.
“I now feel I am at a university that is run by academics for academics, not a subordinate unit enacting KPIs it receives from the head office,” he said.
Historian John DiMoia left NUS at the end of 2016, 15 months after he was offered tenure. The milestone, which many academics strive for, drove his experience with the university downhill.
“There were people at my door constantly checking on how much I was producing and publishing,” said Dr DiMoia, who is now Associate Professor of Korean History at Seoul National University.
International university leaderboards place strong weight on the strength of research at each institution. For instance, academic peer review and citations per faculty make up 60 per cent of an annual ranking published by higher education marketing firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). English magazine Times Higher Education places 30 per cent of its ranking on citations and another 30 per cent on volume, income and reputation of research.
NUS and NTU are placed 11th and 12th, respectively, on the QS rankings.
According to some academics, the schools’ fixation with the numbers game leaves faculty members little bandwidth to properly teach and has driven away some who are more devoted to that aspect of their professorship.
Said political scientist Woo Jun Jie, who left NTU in December 2018: “The real problem is a systemic overemphasis on research outputs over other forms of innovative academic activities, be they pedagogical innovation or community service.”
For Dr DiMoia, “life turned into hell” when he tried to fight for more teaching opportunities after being asked to focus on research upon his tenure. “The managers did not take ‘no’ for an answer. Someone from the department even defaced my door in the office during my sabbatical,” he said.
Education Minister Ong Ye Kung pointed out in September last year that international rankings currently place more weight on the quality of academic papers published by a university. “So, if there is a change I wish for or an improvement I wish for in the international ranking system for universities, it will be to evaluate the effectiveness of a university in collaborating with the world outside of academia — industries, society, communities, government — and delivering impact in all these sectors,” he had said.
In particular, he singled out the great potential for collaboration in social sciences and the humanities for academia, the social services sector, communities and governments. Adding that researchers in these fields need to examine issues of the day “in a robust, evidence-based, scientifically rigorous, outcome-focused way”, Mr Ong added: “In this pursuit we should allay the worries that a social scientist has no future doing local research.”
OPAQUE POLICIES
The so-called KPIs are also constantly changing at the local universities, resulting in tenure and promotion policies executed in a haphazard, “random” manner, said the academics.
“Standards of promotion and tenure are not made clear. Even when they were clear at the time of appointment, they can change suddenly,” said Dr Gelfert.
Noting how the higher-ups at the universities often overrule recommendations made by specialist panels, he said: “While no tenure and promotion procedure is perfect, the level of internal distrust at NUS is astonishingly high. As a result, erratic and unpredictable decisions get made.”
A humanities professor, who will be leaving NUS after being denied tenure and promotion despite having an “exceptionally strong” dossier backed by his department, said the provost had a “warped” view of research excellence.
“His manner of conveying what he thinks is ‘excellent’ to the rest of the university is counterproductive and smacks of poor leadership… (he) is bent on improving NUS’ ranking through a haphazard approach of gaming various ranking systems as quickly as possible,” said the professor in his mid-30s, who asked to remain anonymous.
Business professor Ho Teck Hua was promoted to take on the roles of NUS’ Senior Deputy President and Provost in January last year. The 57-year-old specialises in marketing, decision sciences and behavioural economics and was previously with the University of California, Berkeley.
NUS and Prof Ho did not respond to the former academics’ criticism of the provost.
Dr DiMoia said he had former colleagues whose promotion and tenure prospects were reviewed for up to two years “for undisclosed reasons”. In a Facebook post in December, Dr DiMoia commented that NUS’ history department — which he referred to as a “certain department in (the university’s building) AS-1” — saw a “double digit” attrition of faculty members between 2014 and 2017.
NUS and NTU websites have some details on term contracts for staff members, but no information on promotion processes. This is unlike some reputed colleges overseas such as Yale University in New Haven and the University of California in Berkeley, which have published their advancement criteria, appraisal process and salary scales online.
Asked about claims that their policies lack transparency, NUS and NTU maintained that promotion and tenure review is a rigorous and “multi-level” process that has remained consistent across all faculty members.
Both education and research are important considerations for recruitment and retention. Assessments involve both internal reviewers and external referees, the schools added.
“This is in line with best practices adopted by top universities around the world. A candidate’s education performance is judged by student feedback for courses taught as well as through peer assessment reports. In addition, each candidate is evaluated on the impact of his or her research achievements compared with academics of a similar standing from peer and/or aspirant institutions,” said the NUS spokesperson.
NTU offered a largely similar response, adding that information on promotion and tenure policies is available to staff via the university’s intranet system. “The provost also conducts dialogues with faculty members, together with deans and chairs, to discuss promotion and tenure matters and facilitate in-depth understanding of the processes and expectations,” said the university’s spokesman.
The MOE said autonomous universities “make their own decisions and policies regarding staff recruitment, promotion and tenure”, taking into account the individual’s contributions across teaching, research and service.
“In reviewing these policies, they adopt best practices from established universities worldwide,” said its spokesperson.
‘RESEARCH QUALITY, PERSONAL HEALTH AFFECTED’
The rush to climb global university leagues has led to a fixation with certain types of research, typically in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) fields, inevitably sidelining other research, academics said.
A former member of NUS’ Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences said it was challenging to research on systemic social issues in Singapore because the work was “under scrutiny”.
Prof Gelfert lamented the lack of funding for the humanities, citing how scholarship offers in the philosophy graduate programme fell to an all-time low of 1.33 towards the end of his stint. “The university, which is dominated by engineering, medicine and quantitative sciences, remained unresponsive to the special needs of arts and social sciences… the humanities are seen as mere teaching facilities by both the rest of the university and MOE,” he stated.
Other observers have also called for the universities to support Singapore-specific research. Last month, Prof Linda Lim and Prof Pang Eng Fong, who are emeritus professors from the University of Michigan and Singapore Management University respectively, wrote in a commentary published in South China Morning Post: “Research, the lifeblood of academia, is valuable to the nation and the world. So there must be a secure place in our universities for local tenure-track faculty and others doing local research that may not be published in highly ranked international journals or contribute to global university rankings.”
Speaking to TODAY, Prof Lim added that high faculty turnover makes it difficult for universities to build a distinct “scholarly identity” that can be recognised globally, which will make it challenging, in the long run, to attract new faculty and graduate students. “Nobody wants to invest scarce time and effort in developing relationships and partnerships with people who are likely to leave within a few years,” she said.
These institutions will also incur financial costs in searching for and recruiting new people, diverting time from the core activities of teaching, research and service, she added.
Several academics told TODAY that working under the high-pressure conditions with little flexibility for academic innovation had caused their mental health to take a hit.
Dr Andrew Quitmeyer, who left NUS’ communications department in December, said he was a “nervous, paranoid, depressed wreck” towards the end of his two-year stint there. Dr Quitmeyer, who studies intersections between wild animals and computational devices, found it challenging to design an interesting curriculum when “I felt like pulling my teeth out even planning basic things like field trips”.
“(The university) had plenty of money, what they wanted was ranking-bait. They just wanted to game metrics…I grew incredibly depressed and wouldn’t be able to leave my bed for whole days at a time,” said Dr Quitmeyer.
Despite their grouses, most of the academics consider their interactions with students a highlight of their academic careers at NUS and NTU.
Dr Quitmeyer, for instance, said teaching NUS students has been “one of (his) biggest joys”. “They have so much potential and thrive in incredible ways if you just give them the slightest bit of freedom and personal responsibility. I was happy to see my students develop and bloom, and I pray that somehow NUS fixes itself to embrace their own talents instead of chasing metrics and chasing the pointless prestige of others,” he said.
“I think the impact of frequent movements is strongest on students, especially when good teachers leave. Furthermore, relationships that are formed between students and faculty are disrupted,” said Dr Woo, who will join the Education University of Hong Kong to work on education policy in East and Southeast Asia.
